Browse Items (1664 total)

In 1919, French businessman Raymond Orteig established a $25000 prize to the first person to fly non-stop from New York to Paris. Eight years later, Charles Augustus Lindbergh collected the prize. Lindbergh's achievement was a boon to the fledgling…

In an era of supersonic jets and bullet trains, of flights to the moon and Google Maps, Charles Lindbergh's legendary 33 hour and 30 minute solo flight across the Atlantic in the cramped cockpit of a one-engine plane continues to capture the…

Nathan Leopold (1904-1971) wrote Life Plus 99 Years while in prison awaiting a parole hearing. He was released in 1958 after thirty-three years of incarceration. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb’s (1905-1936) are best known for the heinous murder of…

The trial of Nathan Leopold (1904-1971) and Richard Loeb (1905-1936), at Chicago's Courthouse Place, was a media spectacle drawing hundreds of spectators every day. Loeb’s family hired famed attorney Clarence Darrow, one of the most renowned criminal…

After his release from prison in 1958, Nathan Leopold (1904-1971) moved to Puerto Rico where he restarted his life as an x-ray technician and advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. In this letter, he discusses his opposition to capital…

Richard Loeb was killed in 1936 by his cellmate James Day at the Illinois State Penitentiary at Statesville. During his time in prison, he was under constant threat by other prisoners because of the heinous nature of his crime. Leopold (19 at the…

The headline for the August 28, 1924, edition of The San Francisco Call refers to the thrill killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb's trial for the horrific murder of Bobby Franks. Newspapers across the country followed the court case, filling their…

Levin's novel was based on the 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case. Psychiatric experts played a large part in the young men's avoidance of the electric chair, as it had in the trial of Charles Guiteau, who assassinated President Garfield in 1881 and…

Western fiction got its starts in the penny dreadfuls and dime novels of the Civil War era. The Hopalong Cassidy stories were first published in 1904 and Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage was released in 1912. The genre peaked in 1960. Frank…

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” These words, spoken by Walter B. Gibson's fictional crime-fighting vigilante The Shadow are part of radio history. The Shadow radio program debuted on the 1930 CBS Detective Story…